5/20/2008 @ 3:05PM

One Laptop Per Child--Version 2.0

On Tuesday, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, announced the next generation of the XO, the $188 pint-sized PC designed for schoolchildren in developing countries. At an event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., Negroponte showed off design photos of a new version of his low-cost brainchild–what he described as the XO-2.

The new machines, which OLPC plans to deliver in 2010, will lose their green rubbery keyboard, sporting instead a single square display with a hinge at its center, splitting the device into two multi-touch screens that can either mimic the pages of a book or function as a dual display and keyboard.

“This laptop comes from a different point of view,” Negroponte said. “Over the past couple of years, we’ve learned that the book experience is key. So we said the next generation should be a book. And since it’s also got a touch-sensitive display, you can use it as a laptop.”

Negroponte added that OLPC also aims to cut the XO’s energy use to a single watt, compared with around two watts for the current XO or as many as 40 watts for a typical laptop–trimming the time necessary for kids to crank the power generator in versions sold in countries without widespread electricity.

And the so-called “hundred-dollar laptop,” whose price has swelled to $188 over the past several years, will get a cost reduction as well. The new target for the XO’s price tag is $75, Negroponte said. He argued that the falling price of high-definition displays built for portable DVD players will help enable OLPC to build the machines at a lower price.

Negroponte’s optimistic announcement comes at an uncertain time in the XO’s development. Just last week, OLPC announced a partnership with
Microsoft
to offer Windows XP on its laptops in four test countries instead of a Linux-based version of operating system known as “Sugar.” Future versions of the XO, OLPC has said, will offer a “dual-boot” option that lets users choose between the two operating systems when they turn on the PC. (See: “One Laptop Project Adds Windows.”)

That Microsoft tie-up has seemed like a betrayal to many XO supporters who have been deeply invested in the development of Sugar. Last month, OLPC President Walter Bender left the organization to found Sugar Labs, which will attempt to bring the XO’s original operating system to other machines. Another OLPC employee, former Security Director Ivan Krstic, posted an angry manifesto on his blog last week, criticizing Negroponte and accusing him of compromising the XO’s original mission in his zeal to sell more machines.

“I quit when Nicholas told me–and not just me–that learning was never part of the mission,” Krstic wrote. “The mission was, in his mind, always getting as many laptops as possible out there.”

Negroponte fired back at those critics in Tuesday’s presentation. “One person idiotically said that ‘Nicholas isn’t interested in learning,’ or something like that,” he said. “It really puzzled me, because this is an education project, it’s not a laptop project. I don’t think I can say it more often.”

Intel
, which broke off its partnership with OLPC in January to focus on promoting its competing low-cost laptop, the Classmate, also received a jab from Negroponte. “McDonald’s doesn’t compete with the World Food Program,” he said. “So I don’t know why Intel thinks they’re competing with us.” (See: “Intel’s Laptop Flap.”)

OLPC’s machines may, however, cut into sales of Intel’s second-generation Classmate, which the chip maker released in partnership with Portland, Ore.-based Computer Technology Link last month. (See: “Intel Vs. The XO.”) Negroponte said that OLPC will aim to cut the $188 price tag of existing machines to $100 even before the 2010 target date for the XO-2. The organization will also reinstate its “Give One, Get One” program in August or September, allowing Americans and Europeans to buy XOs if they also purchase a second machine for a child in the developing world.